A chance encounter with an ad in The Saturday Review prompted the first letter, an endearingly-blunt request with a five dollar bill enclosed. Especially for a poor free-lance writer and script reader living in New York City. Spanning two decades, it begins in the post-war days of the 1940s when English books were not only difficult to find in the States, they were prohibitively expensive. It was no wonder that upon its publication it became an instant best-seller, going on to be produced as a play and later a major motion picture starring Anne Bancroft and the inimitable Anthony Hopkins.Ĩ4 Charing Cross Road is the correspondence between a brassy American writer and a gentlemanly English bookseller. It was her story, and that of countless booksellers and booklovers the world over.

Downs and her compatriots loved this little book with such an undying loyalty. I saw now, as an adult, what I had been unprepared to see as a girl. He took it from me and read it in one sitting, dashing the tears from his eyes when he was done. Philip came home a few hours later to find me sobbing into my pillow over it. Marooned at home one day with a fever and not quite up to the thundering word-craft of Wuthering Heights on my bedside table, I dipped into a paperback version of 84, Charing Cross Road that I had picked up along the way in memory of my beloved Mrs. 'Frank Doel, what are you DOING over there, you are not doing ANYthing, you are just sitting AROUND.i swear i don't know how that shop keeps going.' ~H.H.

Charing cross road books